


Wreck My Mind While the Planet Turns

by metaphasia



Category: Sky High (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 10:17:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4259601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metaphasia/pseuds/metaphasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s still not exactly sure what she’s actually going to make of her life, but she knows that whatever she does, she won’t be wasting her potential.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wreck My Mind While the Planet Turns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gray Cardinal (Gray_Cardinal)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gray_Cardinal/gifts).



In the end, they decide to try her as a juvenile, the same as all the others except Stitches. She gets a minimal sentence and her records will be sealed when her time is served. In the back of her mind, she wonders throughout the entirety of her time in prison if the defense her lawyer came up with, that Stitches was the mastermind of the entire plot and she was only doing what she was raised to believe, is true. So little of Sue was left after the Pacifier hit her, and what was left feels more like a story she tells to herself than actual memories. She’s no longer sure which pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that make up her mind are Sue, and which are Gwen, and which are Royal Pain.

They can’t turn her mind off. The circuitry behind the detention room is the same as in the supermax supervillain prison and can turn off her technopathy, stop her from moving electronics around with her mind, making them dance to her will, but it can’t shut down her intelligence. Everyone has always underestimated her brain. Actually building powered armor, the Pacifier, those feats required the more overt uses of her power, but designing those items in the first place, figuring out how to make the Pacifier work when mad science wasn’t even a recognized field, when no one used technology except for the gadgets that sidekicks used, was her greatest achievement. So she spends her time in prison productively, dreaming up new devices, refining and improving the schematics for everything she’s ever built, everything she’s ever seen.

The day finally comes when she is released from prison. The light on her face feels different somehow, despite being the same as the light she was sitting in every day for the past five years, the light she was seeing just thirty minutes ago. She quickly discovers however, that “sealed records” aren’t worth much, when you have no work experience, no high school diploma, and not a single teacher or fellow student willing to provide a reference when you had turned them all into toddlers during your senior year. It takes a lot of convincing, but she manages to land a job working technical support at the local Nerd Herd. The feel of the electronics under her fingers, the way that her awareness expands to include every piece of circuitry in the building, is like having blinders lifted from her eyes. She knows, instinctively, where every person is just by the cell phones riding in their pockets ( _Kinesthesia_ , she thinks to herself). She manages to gain a reputation as a genius for her ability to fix any broken phone or tablet or computer that crosses her lap; no one ever figures out she is simply rearranging the components with her thoughts into the proper placement to make them work, that all her poking around with screwdrivers is just window dressing. Simply claiming that she is “power cycling the device” resolves almost every question directed her way.

She lasts almost two years before she cracks. In the end, she’s impressed that she managed to last as long as she did. The breaking point is when she figures out that “power cycling the device” isn’t just a convenient excuse, but actually solves the problems the customers are having half the time. She doesn’t want to be a supervillain anymore, but this is clearly not the way either. She spends her entire next paycheck on parts and appliances from the store. Her entire life as Gwen, she never was able to figure out how she built the Pacifier as Sue, which is why she had to resort to stealing the original from the Sanctum. She always ran up against the same problem when she tried to redesign it; the subjects would retain their memories and knowledge, which defeated the entire point of turning superheroes into blank slates. This time though, that is to her advantage, because this time, she wants the person she’s de-aging to remember everything. She turns the beam on herself, and turns back the clock on her life as Gwen. She has an entire plan in place to ensure the new child she will be will wind up with a respectable upbringing this time.

On her third trip through puberty, she becomes very zen about the whole experience ( _Tits happen_ , she thinks and chuckles to herself). She didn't enjoy it the first time (no one enjoys puberty the first time), she was too unpopular to be happy about it. The second time around she was too focused on the mission, on completing the plan and finally beating the Commander, that it was just a distraction. This time, she gets it right. It doesn't feel like her body is mutating, morphing into some strange version of herself. Rather, she looks in the mirror and recognizes her reflection for the first time in years, runs her hands along her body and feels the shape that she knows she always should have been in. It feels like coming home. Her powers kick back in, having lain dormant throughout her childhood, and once again she knows the rush they provide, of life lived fully. She tells her foster parents about them, and she is once again accepted into Sky High.

No one currently teaching at Sky High was either a teacher or a student the last time she was here. Or the first time, for that matter. She has been cutting her hair into a short bob anyway, and dyeing it blonde for years now, just for this day, just in case.

For her third first day at Sky High, she once more has to go through Powers Placement.

The first time around, they weren't ready for what she could do so they assigned her to the sidekick track. When she was Sue, she chose to be a supervillain not for the usual reasons. She didn’t want to take over the world, or wreak destruction upon it for some imagined slight. She was simply furious at the way her gifts had been marginalized, shoved into the sidekick track simply because they were the ones to use gadgets, and no one could be bothered to understand what her power actually meant, rather than simply not looking past a first glance. She had challenged the Commander and Jetstream because they had been recognized as the best heroes of their generation, and by beating them she could prove why she should not have been overlooked ( _In many ways_ , she thinks, _if Will had been there for her first trip through high school, they might have been on the same side, showing the world what sidekicks could do_ ).

The second time around, they recognized what she was capable of (in no small part thanks to what she had done the first time around). That time they called her a hero. However, her mind was too heavily overshadowed by the remaining memories from her time as Sue, from Stitches’ teachings, to accept their recognition.

This time, the third time, the curriculum has changed. When they graduated, Will and Layla were instrumental in campaigning for a redesign of how the school worked. The new Powers Placement no longer splits the students up into clear social castes of haves and have-nots, but rather is to determine a mentor for each student, an older student or alumnus who has similar powers and can coach the freshman in how to use their abilities to the fullest, provide tips and tricks for their particular unique qualities.

She’s a little nervous when she shows off her control over technology. It’s not a common power, even now, but certainly not as unheard of as it was when she was a student for the first time. If anyone’s going to recognize her, this, she figures, is how they would do it. But there is no hue and cry when she activates her abilities, there are no shouts of surprised recognition at what she can do.

Between the increased intelligence her powers provides her, and the sheer amount of life experience she has, she has no problem with any of the coursework. She quickly jumps to the top of the rankings. She was able to get there as Gwen, and that was while she was also plotting world domination. This time, with no evil schemes to advance, it’s almost relaxing to simply coast through school and enjoy herself. She graduates with the highest honors and has easily secured the valedictorian spot. She’s still not exactly sure what she’s actually going to make of her life, but she knows that whatever she does, she won’t be wasting her potential ( _Who knows_ , she thinks to herself, _it might take another few tries to really get it right. But time is on her side_ ).

The third time around, she finally wins. She is young, in the best shape of her life, while any enemies she may have had are old and growing infirm. The system that conspired to hold her down has itself been torn down and replaced with one that treats all the students that pass through it equally. She has been recognized for her accomplishments, when they had been seen as jokes before. She’s not happy, not like that. But she is content. She is fulfilled. This is what winning tastes like: it is the sweat on her lips from a hard day’s labor.


End file.
